Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences – serie

This book presents an analysis of the institutional development of selected social science and humanities (SSH) disciplines in Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Where most narratives of a scholarly past are presented as a succession of ‘ideas,’ research results and theories, this collection highlights the structural shifts in the systems of higher education, as well as institutions of research and innovation (beyond the universities) within which these disciplines have developed. This institutional perspective will facilitate systematic comparisons between developments in various disciplines and countries. Across eight country studies the book reveals remarkably different dynamics of disciplinary growth between countries, as well as important interdisciplinary differences within countries. In addition, instances of institutional contractions and downturns and veritable breaks of continuity under authoritarian political regimes can be observed, which are almost totally absent from narratives of individual disciplinary histories. This important work will provide a valuable resource to scholars of disciplinary history, the history of ideas, the sociology of education and of scientific knowledge.

This volume employs new empirical data to examine the internationalization of the social sciences and humanities (SSH). While the globalization dynamics that have transformed the shape of the world over the last decades has been the subject of a growing number of scientific studies, very few such studies have set out to analyze the globalization of social and human sciences themselves. Arguing against the complacent assumption that Science is ‘international by nature’, this work demonstrates that the growing circulation of scholars and scientific ideas is a complex, contradictory and contested process. Arranged thematically, the chapters in this volume present a coherent exploration of patterns of transnationalization, South-North and East-West exchanges, and transnational regionalization. Further, they offer fresh insight into specific topics including the influence of the Anglo-American research infrastructure and the development of social and human sciences in postcolonial contexts.Featuring contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this work will advance the research agenda and will have interdisciplinary appeal for scholars from across the social sciences.

This book describes how Cold War researchers used expert opinions to construct foreknowledge of geopolitical relevance. Focusing on the RAND Corporation, an American think tank with close relations to the armed forces, Dayé analyses the development of two techniques of prognosis, the Delphi technique and Political Gaming. Based on archival research and interviews, the chapters explore the history of this series of experiments to understand how contemporary social scientists conceived of one of the core categories of the Cold War, the expert, and uncover the systematic use of expert opinions to craft prognoses.This consideration of the expert’s role in Cold War society and what that can tell us about the role of the expert today will be of interest to students and scholars across the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, future studies, the history of the Cold War, social science methodology, and social policy.

This book describes how Cold War researchers used expert opinions to construct foreknowledge of geopolitical relevance. Focusing on the RAND Corporation, an American think tank with close relations to the armed forces, Dayé analyses the development of two techniques of prognosis, the Delphi technique and Political Gaming. Based on archival research and interviews, the chapters explore the history of this series of experiments to understand how contemporary social scientists conceived of one of the core categories of the Cold War, the expert, and uncover the systematic use of expert opinions to craft prognoses.This consideration of the expert’s role in Cold War society and what that can tell us about the role of the expert today will be of interest to students and scholars across the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, future studies, the history of the Cold War, social science methodology, and social policy.

This edited collection analyses the reception of a selection of key thinkers, and the dissemination of paradigms, theories and controversies across the social sciences and humanities since 1945. It draws on data collected from textbooks, curricula, interviews, archives, and references in scientific journals, from a broad range of countries and disciplines to provide an international and comparative perspective that will shed fresh light on the circulation of ideas in the social and human sciences. The contributions cover high-profile disputes on methodology, epistemology, and research practices, and the international reception of theorists that have abiding and interdisciplinary relevance, such as: Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, Karl Polanyi, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak. This important work will be a valuable resource to scholars of the history of ideas and the philosophy of the social sciences; in addition to researchers in the fields of social, cultural and literary theory.

This edited collection analyses the reception of a selection of key thinkers, and the dissemination of paradigms, theories and controversies across the social sciences and humanities since 1945. It draws on data collected from textbooks, curricula, interviews, archives, and references in scientific journals, from a broad range of countries and disciplines to provide an international and comparative perspective that will shed fresh light on the circulation of ideas in the social and human sciences. The contributions cover high-profile disputes on methodology, epistemology, and research practices, and the international reception of theorists that have abiding and interdisciplinary relevance, such as: Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, Karl Polanyi, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak. This important work will be a valuable resource to scholars of the history of ideas and the philosophy of the social sciences; in addition to researchers in the fields of social, cultural and literary theory.

This book explores the role and place of feminist politics in the transformation of the former socialist world and points out the geopolitical mechanisms involved in the deployment of technocratic norms, expert discourses, activist repertoires and academic knowledge on women’s rights and gender equality in the 1990s-2000s. Based on an interdisciplinary approach and scrutinizing transnational flows of people, resources and ideas, the analysis brings together themes and spaces that have been disconnected in previous scholarship. It sheds light on the integration of feminist resources into contemporary governance through complex entanglements of international aid to democratization, “activism beyond borders” and systemic transformation of higher education.The book will be of interest to researchers and students of sociology, political science, gender studies, and East-European studies.

This book explores the role and place of feminist politics in the transformation of the former socialist world and points out the geopolitical mechanisms involved in the deployment of technocratic norms, expert discourses, activist repertoires and academic knowledge on women’s rights and gender equality in the 1990s-2000s. Based on an interdisciplinary approach and scrutinizing transnational flows of people, resources and ideas, the analysis brings together themes and spaces that have been disconnected in previous scholarship. It sheds light on the integration of feminist resources into contemporary governance through complex entanglements of international aid to democratization, “activism beyond borders” and systemic transformation of higher education.The book will be of interest to researchers and students of sociology, political science, gender studies, and East-European studies.

This book sheds new light on the work of Jean-François Champollion by uncovering a constellation of epistemological, political, and material conditions that made his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs possible. Champollion’s success in understanding hieroglyphs, first published in his Lettre à M. Dacier in 1822, is emblematic for the triumphant achievements of comparative philology during the 19th Century. In its attempt to understand humanity as part of a grand history of progress, Champollion’s conception of ancient Egypt belongs to the universalistic aspirations of European modernity. Yet precisely because of its success, his project also reveals the costs it entailed: after examining and welcoming acquisitions for the emerging Egyptian collections in Europe, Champollion travelled to the Nile Valley in 1828/29, where he was shocked by the damage that had been done to its ancient cultural sites. The letter he wrote to the Egyptian viceroy Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1829 demands thatexcavations in Egypt be regulated, denounces European looting, and represents perhaps the first document to make a case for the international protection of cultural goods in the name of humanity.

This book sheds new light on the work of Jean-François Champollion by uncovering a constellation of epistemological, political, and material conditions that made his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs possible. Champollion’s success in understanding hieroglyphs, first published in his Lettre à M. Dacier in 1822, is emblematic for the triumphant achievements of comparative philology during the 19th Century. In its attempt to understand humanity as part of a grand history of progress, Champollion’s conception of ancient Egypt belongs to the universalistic aspirations of European modernity. Yet precisely because of its success, his project also reveals the costs it entailed: after examining and welcoming acquisitions for the emerging Egyptian collections in Europe, Champollion travelled to the Nile Valley in 1828/29, where he was shocked by the damage that had been done to its ancient cultural sites. The letter he wrote to the Egyptian viceroy Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1829 demands thatexcavations in Egypt be regulated, denounces European looting, and represents perhaps the first document to make a case for the international protection of cultural goods in the name of humanity.

This book aims to overcome sociology’s preoccupation with individual authors by exploring a larger social phenomenon that occurs in all academic disciplines but has been paid little attention: the prestige elite. Members of this elite attain the highest levels of peer recognition, their books sometimes circulate by the hundreds of thousands, and every student has read about them. Based on large citation studies, Star Sociologists provides a roster of eminent sociologists, documents the changing elite’s composition over time, contrasts the elite’s career pathways with those of the Nobel Laureates in economics, gives insights into how scholars rise to or fall from eminence, and empirically probes the gatekeeping power of one of its key proponents. The book explores eminence by contextualising conditions that are outside of the elite and argues that in any discipline that is intellectually as disintegrated as sociology, eminence is to be understand as a nested phenomenon: scholars make it into the elite if their ideas are adopted in very different intellectual fields that share little common ground.

This book aims to overcome sociology’s preoccupation with individual authors by exploring a larger social phenomenon that occurs in all academic disciplines but has been paid little attention: the prestige elite. Members of this elite attain the highest levels of peer recognition, their books sometimes circulate by the hundreds of thousands, and every student has read about them. Based on large citation studies, Star Sociologists provides a roster of eminent sociologists, documents the changing elite’s composition over time, contrasts the elite’s career pathways with those of the Nobel Laureates in economics, gives insights into how scholars rise to or fall from eminence, and empirically probes the gatekeeping power of one of its key proponents. The book explores eminence by contextualising conditions that are outside of the elite and argues that in any discipline that is intellectually as disintegrated as sociology, eminence is to be understand as a nested phenomenon: scholars make it into the elite if their ideas are adopted in very different intellectual fields that share little common ground.

This book aims to shed new light on the puzzle of the late Soviet conversion to the “market” and capitalism by revisiting the history of Soviet reform economics. Using a variety of sources, including interviews with economists, archival files, and published materials, it examines the social contexts in which economists employed in economic administration and research institutions could have played a crucial public and political role, the forms of their participation, and the social and political logic behind the selection of economic experts and their rise to power during perestroika and the “transition” period. It also compares the professional trajectories of these reformist economists and assesses the scope of this group’s influence in the post-Soviet period in order to conclude on the new state of economic expertise in Russia.

This book aims to shed new light on the puzzle of the late Soviet conversion to the “market” and capitalism by revisiting the history of Soviet reform economics. Using a variety of sources, including interviews with economists, archival files, and published materials, it examines the social contexts in which economists employed in economic administration and research institutions could have played a crucial public and political role, the forms of their participation, and the social and political logic behind the selection of economic experts and their rise to power during perestroika and the “transition” period. It also compares the professional trajectories of these reformist economists and assesses the scope of this group’s influence in the post-Soviet period in order to conclude on the new state of economic expertise in Russia.

This book examines the increasing internationalization of the social sciences, focusing specifically on how Europeanization has reshaped the production of social science knowledge. Over recent decades, research has highlighted how ideas, people, and techniques have circulated between nation-states and how international organizations have facilitated these flows. Following a similar trajectory to nation-states, the EU has driven shifts in knowledge production to address its unique challenges, including economic and social integration, cultural coordination, homogenization, standardization, and institutional construction. The book explores these dynamics through 10 chapters that analyze the processes and consequences of Europeanization. Drawing on diverse methods and analytical approaches, the chapters are structured around three key dimensions: hierarchies, practices, and institutions. Together, they provide a comprehensive account of how European institutions, networks, and ideas have transformed the social sciences.

This volume employs new empirical data to examine the internationalization of the social sciences and humanities (SSH). While the globalization dynamics that have transformed the shape of the world over the last decades has been the subject of a growing number of scientific studies, very few such studies have set out to analyze the globalization of social and human sciences themselves. Arguing against the complacent assumption that Science is ‘international by nature’, this work demonstrates that the growing circulation of scholars and scientific ideas is a complex, contradictory and contested process. Arranged thematically, the chapters in this volume present a coherent exploration of patterns of transnationalization, South-North and East-West exchanges, and transnational regionalization. Further, they offer fresh insight into specific topics including the influence of the Anglo-American research infrastructure and the development of social and human sciences in postcolonial contexts.Featuring contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this work will advance the research agenda and will have interdisciplinary appeal for scholars from across the social sciences.